My Confession

The idea of leaving Berea feels a little sad today. Everything is so familiar here. I’m sitting in the library right now and I can tell you stories about at least 10 of the people standing around me. On the way home from church I saw people I know going to the grocery store, walking their dogs and grabbing a cup of coffee. I went to that same coffee shop about an hour later and everyone knew my name and thought of me fondly. I’m going to miss the recognition that comes with a small town.

I suppose I can build this same familiarity somewhere else but it’s going to take so long and to be honest, I’m not sure I can give it that much effort. I suppose I’ll have to. But deep down I know that I’m not a big city girl or a country girl, as shameful as it is to admit I’m a small town suburban kind of girl. It took a while for me to come to terms with this but it’s a hundred percent true.

Those in the radical community tend to talk a lot of shit on the suburbs but if we step back and start being honest with ourselves, that’s where the majority of us come from. Why is it that we are so quick to turn our back on our own communities so that we might be able to force ourselves into communities that don’t belong to us? Why do so many talk about the shame of the role they play in gentrification as if they have no choice? We keep trying to clean up the mess that systematic oppression leaves behind but we runaway from the source. We runaway from the suburbs, the country towns, the South, the Midwest. Helping the oppressed, though necessary, is not going to end oppression. Racisim, sexism, transphobia, heterosexism, xenophobia, etc will never disappear unless we work with the racists, the sexists, the transphobic, the homophobes, the xenophobic. That is where change needs to be made. That is where there is work to be done. And who ever started the ugly rumor that privilege was such a good thing anyway?

Privilege is easy but it’s not nurturing. And there are a rare few who are privileged across the board. In fact I can’t help but believe that the reason we hold so steadfastly to our privilege is because of our oppression. That illusion of power makes up for what we feel we lack. It’s a tricky thing to articulate but systematic oppression hurts all of us, the privileged and the oppressed.

I look at my working class town and I am sometimes taken aback by the racism, sexism and homophobia. But then I wonder to myself, why is the youth of this seemingly quaint suburban town dying in record numbers? Why are so many people so desperately unhappy? So hopeless? And I think it is our privilege. We are widely, white, heterosexual christians. We are supposed to be the chosen people in this country, the powerful. Yet we still seem to have little control over our lives. We are still working in factories that care very little about our health. We are still struggling to feed our families and pay our bills. Still our legacy seems to be that of endless work with little reward. We are taught to dream big but are unable to bring those dreams to fruition. And the only thing we are left to believe is that it’s our fault. That we are failures, after all look at all of our privilege.

Of course none of this is an excuse for racism or any of those other horrible ism’s but perhaps it could help to give us some perspective. I wonder what our world would look like if we radicals with suburban roots returned home and fought from there. I wonder what it would look like if we didn’t have the resources to run from our oppression. Would we actually start trying to change our communities? The communities that widely cause the heartache in this country? Or would we just fizzle out? After all I’m running again. I can’t make it here. Perhaps it’s the lack of solidarity that pushes us out. The isolation and the harm we’ve suffered under all those ism’s. But is that really an excuse? Perhaps that’s the true down side of privilege, it makes it so much easier to run.

So what if instead of moving to San Francisco, Brooklyn, Madison, Asheville, Chicago, we set up communities in towns like Berea or one of the other thousand suburbs in this country. What if we gathered there and got to work?

I’m leaving Berea now, but I’ll be back. And hopefully I can bring some friends with me. Because my dream location isn’t San Francisco, it’s Berea. It’s Berea with Viva, Madeleine, Kristen, Kristina, Brittawnee, Beth, Chris, Caitlin and all the other amazing friends I’ve made along the way, because I know what a huge change we could make here. I know that we could help to save this town. Help save my friends and my family. I know that all of us together could make it better. And that’s all I want, to make it better. Having all of them here is something I’ve wanted for so long but have never admitted. Because really, who would want to live here? And who am I to ask them to make such a sacrifice? But there you have it, that’s my dirty little secret, if I could I would drag all of you here and beg you to help. Beg you to see how important it is. Because in reality the only community I want to save is my own.